Benjamin Graham Quotes

We consider the recent development of stock-option warrants as a near fraud, an existing menace, and a potential disaster. They should be prohibited by law.
Benjamin Graham

There is no sure and easy paths to riches in Wall Street or anywhere else.
Benjamin Graham

The memory of the financial community is proverbially and distressingly short.
Benjamin Graham

The vast majority of stock traders are inevitably doomed to failure.
Benjamin Graham

Investment is most intelligent when it is most businesslike.
Benjamin Graham

Have the courage of your knowledge and experience. If you have formed a conclusion from the facts and if you know your judgement is sound, act on it – even though others may hesitate or differ.
Benjamin Graham

You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.
Benjamin Graham

To achieve satisfactory investment results is easier than most people realise; to achieve superior results is harder than it looks.
Benjamin Graham

If you are shopping for common stocks, choose them the way you would buy groceries, not the way you would buy perfume.
Benjamin Graham

The one principle that applies to nearly all these so-called ‘technical approaches’ is that one should buy because a stock or the market has gone up and one should sell because it has declined. This is the exact opposite of sound business sense everywhere else, and it is most unlikely that it can lead to lasting success in Wall Street. In our own stock-market experience and observation, extending over 50 years, we have not known a single person who has consistently or lastingly made money by thus ‘following the market’.
Benjamin Graham

The investor’s chief problem – and even his worst enemy – is likely to be himself.
Benjamin Graham

If you merely try to bring just a little extra knowledge and cleverness to bear upon your investment program, instead of realising a little better than normal results, you may well find that you have done worse.
Benjamin Graham

It remained true that sound investment principles produced generally sound results.
Benjamin Graham

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis promises safety of principal and an adequate return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.
Benjamin Graham

It is indeed ironical (though not surprising) that common stock purchases of all kinds were quite generally regarded as highly speculative or risky at a time when they were selling on a most attractive basis, and due to begin their greatest advance in history; conversely the very fact they had advanced to what were undoubtedly dangerous levels as judged by past experience later, transformed them into ‘investments’, and the entire stock-buying public into ‘investors’.
Benjamin Graham

There are many ways in which speculation may be unintelligent. Of these the foremost is I) speculating when you think you are investing II) speculating seriously instead of as a pastime, when you lack proper knowledge and skill for it and III) risking more money in speculation than you can afford to lose.
Benjamin Graham

Never mingle your speculative and investment operations in the same account, nor in any part of your thinking.
Benjamin Graham

The more the investor depends on his portfolio and the income therefrom, the more necessary it is for him to guard against the unexpected and the disconcerting in this part of his life.
Benjamin Graham

If the division between investment and speculative operations were as clear now as once it was, we might be able to envisage investors as a shrewd, experienced group who sell out to the heedless, hapless speculators at high prices and buy back from them at depressed levels.
Benjamin Graham

The almost lethal effect of the great market advance upon the once popular formula approach to investment.
Benjamin Graham

Experience teaches that the time to buy stocks is when their price is unduly depressed by temporary adversity. In other words, they should be bought on a bargain basis or not at all.
Benjamin Graham

With every new wave of optimism or pessimism, we are ready to abandon history and time-tested principles; but we cling tenaciously and unquestioningly to our prejudices.
Benjamin Graham

It is bad business to accept an acknowledge possibility of a loss of principal in exchange for a mere 1 or 2% of additional yearly income. If you are willing to assume some risk you should be certain that you can realise a really substantial gain in principal value if things go well.
Benjamin Graham

The market is fond of making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating ordinary vicissitudes [A change of circumstances or fortune] into major setbacks.
Benjamin Graham

Even a mere lack of interest or enthusiasm may impel a price decline to absurdly low levels. Thus we have what appear to be two major sources or undervaluation: 1) currently disappointing results and 2) protracted neglect or unpopularity.
Benjamin Graham

The investors should know about these possibilities [Shares going up and down] and should be prepared for them both financially and psychologically. He will want to benefit from changes in market levels – certainly through an advance in the value of his stock holdings as time goes on, and perhaps also by making purchases and sales at advantageous prices. This interest on his part is inevitable and legitimate enough. But it involves the very real danger that it will lead him into speculative attitudes and activities.
Benjamin Graham

It is easy for us to tell you not to speculate; the hard thing will be for you to follow this advice.
Benjamin Graham

If you want to speculate do so with your eyes open, knowing that you will probably lose money in the end; be sure to limit the amount at risk and to separate it completely from your investment program.
Benjamin Graham

We are convinced that the average investor cannot deal successfully with price movements by endeavouring to forecast them.
Benjamin Graham

The moral seems to be that any approach to money making in the stock market which can be easily described and followed by a lot of people is by it’s terms too simple and too easy to last.
Benjamin Graham

In general, the shares of second line companies fluctuate more widely than the major ones.
Benjamin Graham

Even the intelligent investor is likely to need considerable will power to keep from following the crowd.
Benjamin Graham

The chief advantage, perhaps is that such a formula will give him something to do. As the market advances, he will from time to time makes sales out of his stock holdings, putting the proceeds into bonds; as it declines he will reverse the procedure. These activities will provide some outlet for his otherwise too-pent-up energies. If he is the right kind of investor he will take added satisfaction from the thought that his operations are exactly opposite from those of the crowd.
Benjamin Graham

There are two chief morals to his story: The first is that that stock market often goes far wrong, and sometimes an alert and courageous investor can take advantage of it’s patent errors. The other is that most businesses change in character and quality over the years, sometimes for the better, perhaps more often for the worse. The investor need not watch his companies’ performance like a hawk; but he should give it a good, hard look from time to time.
Benjamin Graham

The true investor scarcely ever is forced to sell his shares, and at all other times he is free to disregard the current price quotation. He need pay attention to it and act upon it only to the extent that it suits his book, and no more. Thus the investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage. That man would be better off if his stocks had no market quotation at all, for he would then be spared the mental anguish caused him by other persons’ mistakes of judgement.
Benjamin Graham

Price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal. At other times he will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.
Benjamin Graham

The most realistic distinction between the investor and the speculator is found in their attitude toward stock-market movements. The speculator’s primary interest lies in anticipating and profiting from market fluctuations. The investors primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.
Benjamin Graham

Market moments are important to him [The investor] in a practical sense, because they alternately create low price levels at which he would be wise to buy and high prices at which he certainly should refrain from buying and probably would be wise to sell.
Benjamin Graham

The investor with a portfolio of sound stocks should expect their prices to fluctuate and should neither be concerned by sizable declines nor become excited by sizable advances. He should always remember that market quotations are their for his convenience, either to be take advantage of or to be ignored. He should never buy a stock because it has gone up or sell one because it has gone down.
Benjamin Graham